A very independent director

Stephen Frears (right) and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays illegal immigrant Okwe, on the set of Dirty Pretty Things.

Stephen Frears didn't have a passion to be a director - until he got bored with studying law, writes Alexa Moses.

Director Stephen Frears has fled many things. He fled a boring career in law to work in the theatre. He fled the theatre to work in movies and television. Now he's fleeing being pinned down as as an artist, an auteur, or anything else that smells of pretentiousness.

"It's a nightmare being interviewed," Frears says on the phone from London. The British director has a reputation for being circumspect, for not giving the kind of answers that pack neatly between quotation marks.

Nonetheless, he seems affable and canny, and his educated British tones have something of actor Stephen Fry about them.

"I spend my life being interviewed. Billy Wilder didn't have much to say. He just made good films. I would prefer people to see the films."

Then what does his latest film say about him?

Dirty Pretty Things is an urban thriller about illegal migrants in London fleeing from the Immigration Department and their own pasts. Nigerian Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) works as a taxi driver and hotel concierge, although he trained as a doctor. He lives on the sofa at the home of Senay (Audrey Tautou), a Turkish national who works in the hotel as a maid. During one of his overnight shifts, Okwe discovers something grisly in room 510 of the Baltic Hotel.

The film traces Okwe's path through a grey underworld where human lives are expendable, where their job is to pretty things up for the "real" people, and where there's no way for illegal migrants to call for help because, technically, they don't exist. It's a place where everyone is paid in cash or fake passports.

In Frears' opinion, Dirty Pretty Things doesn't say all that much about him. The idea and story came from seasoned British writer Steven Knight, who has written novels and television drama and was one of the brains behind the television show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Frears directed the film "for all the same reasons you liked it" - because he liked the script, which is a thriller without being "one of those spinach films, those films that's good for you". He's stridently not a writer-director who likes to make autobiographical films.

"I'm only a director," he says. "I've got one arm and I'm only a director. Well, no, I'm just not like that. I love working with writers. Not having this weight of a very personal statement on my shoulders is a relief. It's still hard enough to make a story that holds people, even if you're not flapping around worrying if you're an artist or not. Other people can worry or not. I depend on finding good scripts."

Frears has a nose for a good script. He directed My Beautiful Laundrette, from the book by Hanif Kureshi; Dangerous Liaisons, adapted from the 18th-century novel by Choderlos de Laclos; and High Fidelity. He's been known to ignore the siren call of Hollywood to direct sturdy, low-budget features in his own country.

His actions show him to be a rebel, and he says he's "eccentric", but in his opinion he's a stoutly conventional eccentric.

Perhaps, in an industry such as film, Frears' unashamed middle-classness is what makes him stand out. He describes himself as someone who "did what he was told". He read law at Cambridge University before packing it in to work at the Royal Court Theatre in London, when it was at the forefront of the leftist movement.

"I was brought up in a conventional middle-class family and my father was a doctor, and I assumed I was going to be a professional. I didn't really think until I was in my mid-20s. Rebellion wasn't fashionable in those days. I hurried to be as conventional as possible. I ran to conform. And then I stopped."

He pauses. Perhaps this is it. Maybe Frears is about to describe the brilliant epiphany that explains how a middle-class law student became one of the greatest British directors of his era. Why did he stop?

"Because law was arse-achingly boring."

Oh.

Frears says he never even entertained the thought of being a film director until he started working as an assistant to legendary Czech director Karel Reisz. "It wasn't a job. Films were something you see in cinemas. And then, in my lifetime, films became things that were made by people."

Now Frears is one of the people who makes the films, which means even if he manages to find a good script, he can do any number of things to bugger it up. He can shoot it wrongly, put the emphasis in the wrong place, or cast it badly.

His casting decisions for Dirty Pretty Things were shrewd. Frears chose Audrey Tautou, from Amelie, to play the Turkish female lead in her first English-language movie.

"She talked with a lot of Turkish people and worked very, very hard. She was terrified. She has those black eyes and a chameleon quality. She's just wonderful. I am, as you detect, completely obsessed with her."

Of working with British actor Ejiofor, who endows Okwe with a slow-burning passion underneath a dignified, thoughtful reserve, Frears has one thing to say: "It was obviously the right decision."

Time's up. In his entertaining way, Frears has managed to make himself sound smashingly dull and he hasn't talked in soundbites, which he's frankly gleeful about.

"I'm really sorry you have to think. Sounds to me like a triumph on my part."